) “THE BURNING BABY” by Dylan Thomas from Bradbury, Malcolm, ed

They said that Rhys was burning his baby when a gorse bush broke into fire on the summit of the hill. The bush, burning merrily, assumed to them the sad white features and the rickety limbs of the vicar's burning baby. What the wind had not blown away of the baby's ashes, Rhys Rhys had sealed in a stone jar. With his own dust lay the baby's dust, and near him the dust of his daughter in a coffin of white wood.

They heard his son howl in the wind. They saw him walking over the hill, holding a dead animal up to the light of the stars. They saw Kim in the valley shadows as he moved, with the motion of a man cutting wheat, over the brows of the fields. In a sanatorium he coughed his lung into a basin, stirring his fingers delightedly in the blood. What moved with invisible scythe through the valley was a shadow and a handful of shadows cast by the grave sun.

The brush burned out, and the face of the baby fell away with the smoking leaves.

It was, they said, on a fine sabbath morning in the middle of the summer that Rhys Rhys fell in love with his daughter. The gorse that morning had burst into flames. Rhys Rhys, in clerical black, had seen the flames shoot up to the sky, and the bush on the edge of the hill burn red as God among the paler burning of the grass. He took his daughter's hand as she lay in the garden hammock, and told her that he loved her. He told her that she was more beautiful than her dead mother. Her hair smelt of mice, her teeth came over her lip, and the lids of her eyes were red and wet. He saw her beauty come out of her like a stream of sap. The folds of her dress could not hide from him the shabby nakedness of her body. It was not her bone, nor her flesh, nor her hair that he found suddenly beautiful. The poor soil shudders under the sun, he said. He moved his hand up and down her arm. Only the awkward and the ugly, only the barren bring forth fruit. The flesh of her arm was red with the smoothing of his hand. He touched her breast. From the touch of her breast he knew each inch of flesh upon her. Why do you touch me there? she said.

In the church that morning he spoke of the beauty of the harvest, of the promise of the standing corn and the promise in the sharp edge of the scythe as it brings the corn low and whistles through the air before it cuts into the ripeness. Through the open windows at the end of the aisles, he saw the yellow fields upon the hillside and the smudge of heather on the meadow borders. The world was ripe.

The world is ripe for the second coming of the son of man, he said aloud.

But it was not the ripeness of God that glistened from the hill. It was the promise and the ripeness of the flesh, the good flesh, the mean flesh, flesh of his daughter, flesh, flesh, the flesh of the voice of thunder howling before the death of man.

That night he preached of the sins of the flesh. O God in the image of our flesh, he prayed.

His daughter sat in the front pew, and stroked her arm. She would have touched her breast where he had touched it, but the eyes of the congregation were upon her.

Flesh, flesh, flesh, said the vicar.

His son, scouting in the fields for a mole's hill or the signs of a red fox, whistling to the birds and patting the calves as they stood at their mother's sides, came upon a dead rabbit sprawling on a stone. The rabbit's head was riddled with pellets, the dogs had torn open its belly, and the marks of a ferret's teeth were upon its throat. He lifted it gently up, tickling it behind the ears. The blood from its head dropped on his hand. Through the rip in the belly, its intestines had dropped out and coiled on the stone. He held the little body close to his jacket, and ran home through the fields, the rabbit dancing against his waistcoat. As he reached the gate of the vicarage, the worshippers dribbled out of church. They shook hands and raised their hats, smiling at the poor boy with his long green hair, his ass's ears, and death buttoned under his jacket. He was always the poor boy to them.

Rhys Rhys sat in his study, the stem of his pipe stuck between his flybuttons, the bible unopened upon his knees. The day of God was over, and the sun, like another sabbath, went down behind the hills. He lit the lamp, but his own oil burned brighter. He drew the curtains, shutting out the unwelcome night. But he opened his own heart up, and the bald pulse that beat there was a welcome stranger.

He had not felt love like this since the woman who scratched him, seeing the woman witch in his male eyes, had fallen into his arms and kissed him, and whispered Welsh words as he took her. She had been the mother of his daughter and had died in her pains, stealing, when she was dead, the son of his second love, and leaving the greenhaired changeling in its place. Merry with desire, Rhys Rhys cast the Bible on the floor. He reached for another book, and read, in the lamplit darkness, of the old woman who had deceived the devil. The devil is poor flesh, said Rhys Rhys.

His son came in, bearing the rabbit in his arms. The lank, redcoated boy was a flesh out of the past. The skin of the unburied dead patched to his bones, the smile of the changeling on his mouth, and the hair of the sea rising from his scalp, he stood before Rhys Rhys. A ghost of his mother, he held the rabbit gently to his breast, rocking it to and fro. Cunningly, from under halfclosed lids, he saw his father shrink away from the vision of death. Be off with you, said Rhys Rhys. Who was this green stranger to carry in death and rock it, like a baby under a warm shawl of fur, before him? For a minute the flesh of the world lay still; the old terror set in; the waters of the breast dried up; the nipples grew through the sand. Then he drew his hand over his eyes, and only the rabbit remained, a little sack of flesh, half empty, swaying in the arms of his son. Be off, he said. The boy held the rabbit close, and rocked it, and tickled it again.

Changeling, said Rhys Rhys. He is mine, said the boy, I'll peel him and keep the skull. His room in the attic was crowded with skulls and dried pelts, and little bones in bottles.

Give it to me.

He is mine.

Rhys Rhys tore die rabbit away, and stuffed it deep in the pockets of his smoking coat. When his daughter came in, dressed and ready for bed, with a candle in her hand, Rhys Rhys had death in his pocket.

She was timid, for his touch still ached on her arm and breast but she bent unblushing over him. Saying goodnight, she kissed him, and he blew her candle out. She was smiling as he lowered die wick of the lamp.

Step out of your shift, said he. Shiftless, she stepped towards his arms.

I want the little skull, said a voice in die dark.

From his room at the top of die house, through the webs on the windows, and over the furs and the bottles, the boy saw a mile of green hill running away into the darkness of the first dawn. Summer storm 58 in the heat of the rain, flooring the grassy mile, had left some new morning brightness, out of the dead night, in each reaching root.

Death took hold of his sister's legs as she walked through the calf-deep heather up the hill. He saw the high grass at her thighs. And the blades of the upgrowing wind, out of the four windsmells of the manuring dead, might drive through the soles of her feet, up the veins of the legs and stomach, into her womb and her pulsing heart. He watched her climb. She stood, gasping for breath, on a hill of the wider hill, tapping the wall of her bladder, fondling her matted chest (for the hair grew on her as on a grown man), feeling the heart in her wrist, loving her coveted thinness. She was to him as ugly as the sowfaced woman of Llareggub who had taught him the terrors of the flesh. He remembered the advances of that unlovely woman. She blew out his candle as he stepped towards her on the night the great hail had fallen and he had hidden in her rotting house from the cruelty of the weather. Now half a mile off his sister stood in the morning, and the vermin of the hill might spring upon her as she stood, uncaring, rounding the angles of her ugliness. He smiled at the thought of the devouring rats, and looked around the room for a bottle to hold her heart. Her skull, fixed by a socket to the nail above his bed, would be a smiling welcome to the first pains of waking.

But he saw Rhys Rhys stride up the hill, and the bowl of his sister's head, fixed invisibly above his sheets, crumbled away. Standing straight by the side of a dewy tree, his sister beckoned. Up went Rhys Rhys through the calf-deep heather, the death in the grass, over the boulders and up through the reaching ferns, to where she stood. He'} took her hand. The two shadows linked hands, and climbed together' to the top of the hill. The boy saw them go, and turned his face to the wall as they vanished, in one dull shadow, over the edge, and down the the dingle at the west foot of the lovers' alley.

Later, he remembered the rabbit. He ran downstairs and found it in the pocket of the smoking coat. He held death against him, tasting a cough of blood upon his tongue as he climbed, contented, back to I bright bottles and the wall of heads.

In the first dew of light he saw his father clamber for her white hand. She who was his sister walked with a swollen belly over the hill. She touched him between the legs, and he sighed and sprang at her. But the nerves of her face mixed with the quiver in his thighs, and she shot from him. Rhys Rhys, over the bouldered rim, led her to terror. He sighed and sprang at her. She mixed with him in the fourth and the 59 fifth terrors of the flesh. Said Rhys Rhys, Your mother's eyes. It was not her eyes that saw him proud before her, nor the eyes in her thumb. The lashes of her fingers lifted. He saw the ball under the nail.

It was, they said, on a fine sabbath morning in the early spring that she bore him a male child. Brought to bed of her father, she screamed for an anaesthetic as the knocking head burst through. In her gown of blood she slept until twilight, and a star burst bloody through each ear. With a scissors and rag, Rhys Rhys attended her, and, gazing on the shrivelled features and the hands like the hands of a mole, he gently took the child away, and his daughter's breast cried out and ran into the mouth of the surrounding shadows. The shadow pouted for the milk and the binding cottons. The child spat in his arms, the noise of the running air was blind in its ears, and the deaf light died from its eyes.

Rhys Rhys, with the dead child held against him, stepped into the night, hearing the mother moan in her sleep and the deadly shadow, filled sick with milk, flowing around the house. He turned his face towards the hills. A shadow walked close to him and, silent in the shadow of a full tree, the changeling waited. He made an image for the moon, and the flesh of the moon fell away, leaving a star-eyed skull. Then with a smile he ran back over the lawns and into the crying house. Halfway up the stairs, he heard his sister die. Rhys Rhys Climbed on.

On the top of the hill he laid the baby down, and propped it against the heather. Death propped the dark flowers. The baby stiffened in the rigor of the moon. Poor flesh, said Rhys Rhys as he pulled at the lead heather and furze. Poor angel, he said to the listening mouth of the baby. The fruit of the flesh falls with the worm from the tree. Conceiving the worm, the bark crumbles. There lay the poor star of flesh that had dropped, like the bead of a woman's milk, through the pies of a wormy tree.

He stacked the torn heathers in a circle. On the head of the purple stack, he piled the dead grass. A stack of death, the heather grew as tall as he, and loomed at last over his windy hair.

Behind a boulder moved the accompanying shadow, and the shadow of the boy was printed under the fiery flank of a tree. The shadow marked the boy, and the boy marked the bones of the naked baby under their chilly cover, and how the grass scraped on the bald skull, and where his father picked out a path in the cancerous growths of the silent circle. He saw Rhys Rhys pick up the baby and place it on the top of the stack, saw the head of a burning match, and heard the crackle of the bush, breaking like a baby's arm.

The stack burst into flame. Rhys Rhys, before the red eye of the creeping fire, stretched out his arms and beckoned the shadow from the stones. Surrounded by shadows, he prayed before the flaming stack, and the sparks of the heather blew past his smile. Burn, child, poor flesh, mean flesh, flesh, flesh, sick sorry flesh, flesh of the foul womb, burn back to dust, he prayed.

And the baby caught fire. The flames curled round its mouth and blew upon the shrinking gums. Flames round its red cord lapped its little belly till the raw flesh fell upon the heather.

A flame touched its tongue. Eeeeeh, cried the burning baby, and the illuminated hill replied.

59) A FAMILY MAN by V. S. PRITCHETT from Bradbury, Malcolm, ed. The Penguin Book of Modern British Short Stories. New York: Penguin. 1988.

Late in the afternoon, when she had given him up arid had even changed out of her pink dress into her smock and jeans and was working once more at her bench, the doorbell rang. William had come, after all. It was in the nature of their love affair that his visits were fitful: he had a wife and children. To show that she understood the situation, even found the curious satisfaction of reverie in his absences that lately had lasted several weeks, Berenice dawdled yawning to the door. As she slipped off the chain, she called back into the empty flat, 'It's all right, Father. I'll answer it.'

William had told her to do this because she was a woman living on her own: the call would show strangers that there was a man there to defend her. Berenice's voice was mocking, for she thought his idea possessive and ridiculous; not only that, she had been brought up by Quakers and thought it wrong to tell or act a lie. Sometimes, when she opened the door to him, she would say, 'Well! Mr. Cork', to remind him he was a married man. He had the kind of shadowed handsome¬ness that easily gleams with guilt, and for her this gave their affair its piquancy.

But now - when she opened the door - no William, and the yawn, its hopes and its irony, died on her mouth. A very large woman, taller than herself, filled the doorway from top to bottom, an enormous blob of pink jersey and green skirt, the jersey low and loose at the neck, a face and body inflated to the point of speechlessness. She even seemed to be asleep with her large blue eyes open.

'Yes?' said Berenice.

The woman woke up and looked unbelievingly at Berenice's feet, which were bare, for she liked to go about barefoot at home, and said, 'Is this Miss Foster's place?"

Berenice was offended by the word 'place'. 'This is Miss Foster's residence. I am she.'

'Ah,' said the woman, babyish no longer but sugary. 'I was given your address at the College. You teach at the College, I believe? I've come about the repair.'

'A repair? I make jewellery,' said Berenice. 'I do not do repairs.' 'They told me at the College you were repairing my husband's flute. I am Mrs. Cork.'

Berenice's heart stopped. Her wrist went weak and her hand drooped on the door handle, and a spurt of icy air shot up her body to her face and then turned to boiling heat as it shot back again. Her head suddenly filled with chattering voices saying, Oh, God. How fright¬ful! William, you didn't tell her? Now, what are you, you, you going to do. And the word 'Do, do' clattered on in her head. 'Cork?' said Berenice. 'Flute?'

'Florence Cork,' said the woman firmly, all sleepy sweetness gone. 'Oh, yes. I am sorry. Mrs. Cork. Of course, yes. Oh, do come in. I'm so sorry. We haven't met, how very nice to meet you. William's - Mr. Cork's - flute! His flute. Yes, I remember. How d'you do? How is he? He hasn't been to the College for months. Have you seen him lately -how silly, of course you have. Did you have a lovely holiday? Did the children enjoy it? I would have posted it, only I didn't know your address. Come in, please, come in.'

'In here?' said Mrs. Cork and marched into the front room where Berenice worked. Here, in the direct glare of Berenice's working lamp, Florence Cork looked even larger and even pregnant. She seemed to occupy the whole of the room as she stood in it, memorizing everything - the bench, the pots of paintbrushes, the large designs pinned to the wall, the rolls of paper, the sofa covered with papers and letters and sewing, the pink dress which Berenice had thrown over a chair. She seemed to be consuming it all, drinking all the air.

But here, in the disorder of which she was very vain, which indeed fascinated her, and represented her talent, her independence, a girl's right to a life of her own, and above all, being barefooted, helped Berenice recover her breath.

'It is such a pleasure to meet you. Mr. Cork has often spoken of you to us at the College. We're quite a family there. Please sit. I'll move the dress. I was mending it.'

But Mrs. Cork did not sit down. She gave a sudden lurch towards the bench, and seeing her husband's flute there propped against the wall, she grabbed it and swung it above her head as if it were a weapon.

'Yes,' said Berenice, who was thinking, Oh, dear, the woman's drunk, 'I was working on it only this morning. I had never seen a flute 48 like that before. Such a beautiful silver scroll. I gather it's very old, a German one, a presentation piece given to Mr. Cork's father. I believe he played in a famous orchestra -where was it? - Bayreuth or Berlin? You never see a scroll like that in England, not a delicate silver scroll like that. It seems to have been dropped somewhere or have had a blow. Mr. Cork told me he had played it in an orchestra himself once, Govern Garden or somewhere ..."

She watched Mrs. Cork flourish the flute in the air.

'A blow,' cried Mrs. Cork, now in a rich voice. 'I'll say it did. I threw it at him.'

And then she lowered her arm and stood swaying on her legs as she confronted Berenice and said, 'Where is he?'

'Who?' said Berenice in a fright.

'My husband!' Mrs. Cork shouted. 'Don't try and soft-soap me with all that twaddle. Playing in an orchestra! Is that what he has been stuffing you up with? I know what you and he are up to. He comes every Thursday. He's been here since half past two. I know. I have had this place watched.'

She swung round to the closed door of Berenice's bedroom. 'What's in there?' she shouted and advanced to it.

'Mrs. Cork,' said Berenice as calmly as she could. 'Please stop shouting. I know nothing about your husband. I don't know what you are talking about.' And she placed herself before the door of the room. 'And please stop shouting. That is my father's room.' And, excited by Mrs. Cork's accusation, she said, 'He is a very old man and he is not well. He is asleep in there.'

'In there?' said Mrs. Cork.

'Yes, in there.'

'And what about the other rooms? Who lives upstairs?'

'There are no other rooms,' said Berenice. 'I live here with my father. Upstairs? Some new people have moved in.'

Berenice was astonished by these words of hers, for she was a truthful young woman and was astonished, even excited, by a lie so vast. It seemed to glitter in the air as she spoke it.

Mrs. Cork was checked. She flopped down on the chair on which Berenice had put her dress.

'My dress, if you please,' said Berenice and pulled it away.

'If you don't do it here,' said Mrs. Cork, quietening and with tears in her eyes, 'you do it somewhere else.'

'I don't know anything about your husband. I only see him at the College like the other teachers. I don't know anything about him. If you will give me the flute, I will pack it up for you and I must ask you to go.'

'You can't deceive me. I know everything. You think because you are young you can do what you like,' Mrs. Cork muttered to herself and began rummaging in her handbag.

For Berenice one of the attractions of William was that their meetings were erratic. The affair was like a game: she liked surprise above all. In the intervals when he was not there, the game continued for her. She liked imagining what he and his family were doing. She saw them as all glued together as if in some enduring and absurd photograph, perhaps sitting in their suburban garden, or standing beside a motorcar, always in the sun, but William himself, dark-faced and busy in his gravity, a step or two back from them. 'Is your wife beautiful?' she asked him once when they were in bed. William in his slow serious way took a long time to answer. He said at last, 'Very beautiful.'

This had made Berenice feel exceedingly beautiful herself. She saw his wife as a raven-haired, dark-eyed woman and longed to meet her. The more she imagined her, the more she felt for her, the more she saw eye to eye with her in the pleasant busy middle ground of womanish feelings and moods, for as a woman living alone she felt a firm loyalty to her sex. During this last summer when the family were on holiday she had seen them glued together again as they sat with dozens of other families in the aeroplane that was taking them abroad, so that it seemed to her that the London sky was rumbling day after day, night after night, with matrimony thirty thousand feet above the city, the countryside, the sea and its beaches where she imagined the legs of their children running across the sand, William flushed with his responsibilities, his wife turning to brown her back in the sun. Berenice was often but and about with her many friends, most of whom were married. She loved the look of harassed contentment, even the tired faces of the husbands, the alert looks of their spirited wives. Among the married she felt her singularity. She listened to their endearments and to their bickerings. She played with their children, who ran at once to her. She could not bear the young men ,' who approached her, talking about themselves all the time, flashing ' with the slapdash egotism of young men trying to bring her peculiarity to an end. Among families she felt herself to be strange and necessary- a necessary secret. When William had said his wife was beautiful, she felt so beautiful herself that her bones seemed to turn to water.

But now the real Florence sat rummaging in her bag before her, this balloon-like giant, first babyish and then shouting accusations, the dreamt-of Florence vanished. This real Florence seemed unreal and incredible. And William himself changed. His good looks began to look commonplace and shady: his seriousness became furtive, his praise of her calculating. He was shorter than his wife, his face now looked hang-dog, and she saw him dragging his feet as obediently he followed her. She resented that this woman had made her tell a lie, strangely intoxicating though it was to do so, and had made her feel as ugly as his wife was. For she must be, if Florence was what he called 'beautiful'. And not only ugly, but pathetic and without dignity.

Berenice watched warily as the woman took a letter from her handbag.

Then what is this necklace?' she said, blowing herself out again.

'What necklace is this?' said Berenice.

'Read it. You wrote it."

Berenice smiled with astonishment: she knew she needed no longer defend herself. She prided herself on fastidiousness: she had never in her life written a letter to a lover - it would be like giving something of herself away, it would be almost an indecency. She certainly felt it to be very wrong to read anyone else's letters, as Mrs. Cork pushed the letter at her. Berenice took it in two fingers, glanced and turned it over to see the name of the writer.

This is not my writing,' she said. The hand was sprawling; her own was scratchy and small. 'Who is Bunny? Who is Rosie?'

Mrs. Cork snatched the letter and read in a booming voice that made the words ridiculous:' "I am longing for the necklace. Tell that girl to hurry up. Do bring it next time. And darling, don't forget the flute!!! Rosie." What do you mean, who is Bunny?' Mrs. Cork said. 'You know very well. Bunny is my husband.'

Berenice turned away and pointed to a small poster that was pinned to the wall. It contained a photograph of a necklace and three brooches she had shown at an exhibition in a very fashionable shop known for selling modern jewellery. At the bottom of the poster, elegantly printed, were the words

Berenice read the words aloud, reciting them as if they were a line from a poem: 'My name is Berenice,' she said.

It was strange to be speaking the truth. And it suddenly seemed to her, as she recited the words, that really William had never been to her flat, that he had never been her lover, and had never played his silly flute there, that indeed he was the most boring man at the College and that a chasm separated her from this woman, whom jealousy had made so ugly.

Mrs. Cork was still swelling with unbelief, but as she studied the poster, despair settled on her face. 'I found it in his pocket,' she said helplessly.

'We all make mistakes, Mrs. Cork,' Berenice said coldly across the chasm. And then, to be generous in victory, she said, 'Let me see the letter again.'

Mrs. Cork gave her the letter and Berenice read it and at the word 'flute' a doubt came into her head. Her hand began to tremble and quickly she gave the letter back. 'Who gave you my address -1 mean, at the College?' Berenice accused. There is a rule that no addresses are given. Or telephone numbers.'

The girl,' said Mrs. Cork, defending herself.

'Which girl? At Enquiries?'

'She fetched someone.'

'Who was it?' said Berenice.

'I don't know. It began with a W, I think,' said Mrs. Cork.

'Wheeler?' said Berenice. There is a Mr. Wheeler.'

'No, it wasn't a man. It was a young woman. With a W - Glowitz.'

That begins with a G,' said Berenice.

'No,' said Mrs. Cork out of her muddle, now afraid of Berenice. 'Glowitz was the name.'

'Glowitz,' said Berenice, unbelieving. 'Rosie Glowitz. She's not I young.'

'I didn't notice,' said Mrs. Cork. 'Is her name Rosie?' Berenice felt giddy and cold. The chasm between herself and Mrs. I Cork closed up.

'Yes,' said Berenice and sat on the sofa, pushing letters and papers away from herself. She felt sick. 'Did you show her the letter?' she said.

'No,' said Mrs. Cork, looking masterful again for a moment: 'She told me you were repairing the flute.'

'Please go,' Berenice wanted to say but she could not get her breath 52 to say it. 'You have been deceived. You are accusing the wrong person. I thought your husband's name was William. He never called himself Bunny. We all call him William at the College. Rosie Glowitz wrote this letter.' But that sentence, 'Bring the flute', was too much -she was suddenly on the side of this angry woman, she wished she could shout and break out into rage. She wanted to grab the flute that lay on Mrs. Cork's lap and throw it at the wall and smash it.

'I apologize, Miss Foster,' said Mrs. Cork in a surly voice. The glister of tears in her eyes, the dampness on her face, dried. 'I believe you. I have been worried out of my mind - you will understand.'

Berenice's beauty had drained away. The behaviour of one or two of her lovers had always seemed self-satisfied to her, but William, the most unlikely one, was the oddest. He would not stay in bed and gossip but he was soon out staring at the garden, looking older, as if he were travelling back into his life: then, hardly saying anything, he dressed, turning to stare at the garden again as his head came out of his shirt or he put a leg into his trousers, in a manner that made her think he had completely forgotten. Then he would go into her front room, bring back the flute and go out to the garden seat and play it. She had done a cruel caricature of him once because he looked so comical, his long lip drawn down at the mouthpiece, his eyes lowered as the thin high notes, so sad and lascivious, seemed to curl away like wisps of smoke into the trees. Sometimes she laughed, sometimes she smiled, sometimes she was touched, sometimes angry and bewildered. One j proud satisfaction was that the people upstairs had complained.

She was tempted, now that she and this clumsy woman were at one J to say to her, 'Aren't men extraordinary! Is this what he does at home, I does he rush out to your garden, bold as brass, to play that silly thing?' And then she was scornful. To think of him going round to Rosie" Glowitz's and half the gardens of London doing this!'

But she could not say this, of course. And so she looked at poor Mrs. Cork with triumphant sympathy. She longed to break Rosie Glowitz's neck and to think of some transcendent appeasing lie which would make Mrs. Cork happy again, but the clumsy woman went on making everything worse by asking to be forgiven. She said 'I am truly sorry and 'When I saw your work in the shop I wanted to meet you. That is really why I came. My husband has often spoken of it.'

Well, at least, Berenice thought, she can tell a lie too. Suppose I gave her everything I've got, she thought. Anything to get her to go. Berenice looked at the drawer of her bench, which was filled with beads and pieces of polished stone and crystal. She felt like getting handfuls of it and pouring it all on Mrs. Cork's lap.

'Do you work only in silver?' said Mrs. Cork, dabbing her eyes. 'I am,' said Berenice, 'working on something now.' And even as she said it, because of Mrs. Cork's overwhelming presence, the great appeasing lie carne out of her, before she could stop herself. 'A present,' she said. 'Actually,' she said, 'we all got together at the College. A present for Rosie Glowitz. She's getting married again. I expect that is what the letter is about. Mr. Cork arranged it. He is very kind and thoughtful.'

She heard herself say this with wonder. Her other lies had glittered, but this one had the beauty of a newly discovered truth.

'You mean Bunny's collecting the money?' said Mrs. Cork.

'Yes,' said Berenice.

A great laugh came out of Florence Cork. 'The big spender,' she said, laughing. 'Collecting other people's money. He hasn't spent a penny on us for thirty years. And you're all giving this to that woman I talked to who has been married twice? Two wedding presents!'

Mrs. Cork sighed.

'You fools. Some women get away with it, I don't know why,' said Mrs. Cork, still laughing. 'But not with my Bunny,' she said proudly find as if with alarming meaning. 'He doesn't say much. He's deep, is my Bunny!'

'Would you like a cup of tea?' said Berenice politely, hoping she could say no and go.

'I think I will,' Mrs. Cork said comfortably. 'I'm so glad I came to you. And,' she added, glancing at the closed door, 'what about your father? I expect he could do with a cup.'

Mrs. Cork now seemed wide awake and it was Berenice who felt dazed, drunkish, and sleepy.

'I'll go and see,' she said.

In the kitchen she recovered and came back trying to laugh, saying, is must have gone for his little walk in the afternoon, on the quiet.'

You have to keep an eye on them at that age,' said Mrs. Cork. They sat talking and Mrs. Cork said, 'Fancy Mrs. Glowitz getting married again.' And then absently, 'I cannot understand why she says “Bring the flute.'"

Well,' said Berenice agreeably, 'he played it at the College party.'

‘Yes,' said Mrs. Cork. 'But at a wedding, it's a bit pushy. You wouldn't think it of my Bunny, but he is pushing.'

They drank their tea and then Mrs. Cork left. Berenice felt an enormous kiss on her face and Mrs. Cork said, 'Don't be jealous of Mrs. Glowitz, dear. You'll get your turn,' as she went.

Berenice put the chain on the door and went to her bedroom and lay on the bed.

How awful married people are, she thought. So public, sprawling over everyone and everything, always lying to themselves and forcing you to lie to them. She got up and looked bitterly at the empty chair under the tree at first and then she laughed at it and went off to have a bath so as to wash all those lies off her truthful body. Afterwards she rang up a couple called Brewster who told her to come round. She loved the Brewsters, so perfectly conceited as they were, in the burdens they bore. She talked her head off. The children stared at her.

'She's getting old. She ought to get married,' Mrs. Brewster said. 'I wish she wouldn't swoosh her hair around like that. She'd look better if she put it up.'